Emram woke up. He went over to his window, and flung back the curtains, to find the day clear, bright and with a delightful crispness to the air. He dressed in his usual casual attire of chain mail (he only wore plate armour for special occasions, like wars and when his family came round), sat at his small table, and breakfasted on toast, liberally smeared with peanut butter.

When he had finished his repast, he took up his sword, belting it in place, and left his rooms to sally forth and see what was afoot.

He made his way to the main living roo of the mansion, where many of the other Scoobs were often to be found, but he entered the room to discover it was empty. Clearly the others had been here not too long before; there were breakfast plates on the table, and a jug of coffee that was still slightly warm to the touch.

He went to the kitchen, only to find it also deserted. Where was everyone? Not a sound could be heard except the padding of his soft leather boots. Not even Ragnar's bellows echoed around the corridors (in itself, an unusual thing).

Emram made his way around the mansion, but found no one on the ground floor. He continued his way up, floor by floor, pausing outside bedroom dors to listen for any sound that the others had all decided to sleep in, but heard nothing. Eventually, he began to work his way around the various rooms and corridiors within the roof of the mansion, and he started to feel a little worried. Almost no one ever came up this far, and with good reason - all sorts of things lurked up here, the majority of them nasty and vindictive - although obviously no problem for a graduate from the Camelot College of Knightly Pursuits (Emram had stayed on and got his Doctorate in Mythical Creatures, writing his thesis on the Vulnerable Spots of Beasts From Pagan Mythology).

He explored the warren of corridors and rooms in the roof of the mansion, and then came back down to the main entrance hall, starting to get really worried now. He wnet outside, thinking that maybe the Scoobs had decided to venture forth for some reason, despite the fact that it was really quite cold, but there was no snow, so sledding was out of the question.

But the Scoo-bus was still parked in the driveway. There was no sign of them anywhere. Emram climbed up into the tree house, and scanned the surrounding area for any sign of the others.

He sat in a hammock, idly swinging his sword (it was a bad habit he'd picked up from his older brother, and had nearly resulted in the decapitation of his dog, Binco, on more than one occasion) while he contemplated the conundrum. It apeared, he reasoned, that one of two things had happened. Three, he mentally amended.

1) The Scoobs had simply all decided to go out somewhere, and not told him. Plausible enough, although a little unfair, and definitely unusual.

2) The entire gang, excluding himself, had been kidnapped. Again, unusual, and hardly likely. The Scoobs could look after themselves. And besides, why kidnap them in the first place? It wasn't like Emram could afford to pay any kind of ransom.

3) Something magical and fishy had occurred. Much more likely, given the unstable nature of the mansion. But what? And why were there absolutely no signs whatsoever of what had occurred?

Emram leapt up, flourishing his sword, and then unflourished it. He needed answers, and, with all of the other Scoobs missing, he hadn't got a clue where to get them from.

The technition watched the subject with near indifference, concentrating instead on the console settings before him. They came and they went, admittedly this one was a bit weirdere than most but it's mostly what he'd come to expect. Besides Perdo liked his new job.

He sure hoped Jeff would make it back with the coffee soon. This duty was boring, and even if the coffee stank at least he'd have a little company.

***********************************************

On the live end of the Transmission, Emram had the right idea ,but was a mere 180 degrees out of phase. It wasn't the others that had vanished it was him!

He didn't know how it had happened, after all he didn't even know it HAD happened, so what could you say? He was in a virtural reality setting and hadn't a clue. I wonder if they covered this in school?!

Kara helped herself to another bagel and another helping of scrambled eggs from the heaping platter of food on the coffee table. She chatted amiably with Kay and Jila while Ragnar piled his plate high with waffles and syrup.

"Where's the coffee?" Kay asked suddenly.

"It was here a minute ago." Kara said. "I just put the caraffe down."

But the coffee was not where she had left it. Jila spotted it a minute later on the side table.

Ragnar shrugged in response to Jila's question. He didn't know how it had gotten over there either. "I'll get it." He offered, already in motion.

"Maybe IQ has been playing around again. You know his passion for kitchen applainces."

Pursing his lips, the hungry viking took a momewnt to check the caraffe for little feet before bringing it over to the others. Kara's observation was also truer than any of them cared to notice. He sniffed it's contents.

"Rae's?" Kay asked. Rae of course being the chief coffee maker when she was around.

He shook his head. "Too weak." and poured everyone who wanted on a cup.

Then he turned to Kara. "Emram's still going a little light on the food. That trip to the crab festival did him in." Convienently forgetting his own experience.

_________________________________________

Why thank you Kara. I figure it was time for Perdo and Jeff to surface again, after all there therapy should be about over by now.

"Hey, how's this?" asked Sandworm, "I just learned in RL that according to quantum physics and something called Bell's inequality, 1 of the following is not true:

1. There is a real world

2. contrafactoral definiteness - a particle cannot both pass through a slit and not pass through a slit

3. You cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

"The problem is that if 1 is true... well, we don't exist, if 2 is true, there can be multiple universes, and if 3 is true we could travel back in time and kill our grandmothers and then never have been born to travel back in time and kill our grandmothers, so we can't have killed our grandmothers... My head hurts again.

"Maybe Emram is trapped in another universe?" he finished, "because I'm with number 2."

Sikozu: "Do you have any plan of escape?"
Aeryn: "Run"
Sikozu: "Anything more detailed?"
Aeryn: "Run quickly" - Bringing home the Beacon

...
"but it's so fun thinking up problems," said Sandworm. "Hypothetical scenarios are so much safer than real ones. And I have no chance of getting wet."
He turned to Kay.
"Pass the scrambled eggs, would you, my pretty?"

Sikozu: "Do you have any plan of escape?"
Aeryn: "Run"
Sikozu: "Anything more detailed?"
Aeryn: "Run quickly" - Bringing home the Beacon

"I love thinking about time paradoxes." Kara said. "They are just so interesting. If you COULD go back in time and kill your grandmother and therefore never existed in order to go back in time to kill your grandmother, perhaps the timeline would take over and keep her dead by causing something ELSE to kill her."

Everybody looked at Kara strangely.

"Well, hypothetically..." Kara trailed off.

She looked at everybody looking at her.

"Well, anyway, I LIKED my grandmother and wouldn't want anything bad to happen to her before her time. Pass the tabasco sause please."

KaraS

For we are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of the dreams - Willy Wonka

"Well I'm all for leaving time alone. I kind of like myself. Besides, if things worked out differentlythen none of you would have met me and then just think how lacking your lives would be." Ragnar put just enough play ego in his voice to make it sound sincere. Sorry, but I cann't imagine a world without me in it. Who else would there be to torment?"

"yeah, ok, Rag. I don't think you would actually be able to kill your grandmother, Kara, I don't think the laws of physics would let you. something would happen to stop you. That's what I think, anyway... any chance of another of those bagels, Kara? they are wonderful." He looked meaningfully at the half-full container, just out of reach.

Sikozu: "Do you have any plan of escape?"
Aeryn: "Run"
Sikozu: "Anything more detailed?"
Aeryn: "Run quickly" - Bringing home the Beacon

Emram climbed down from the tree house. The sun had a strange quality to it at this hour, almost as though it weren't the sun at all, but stage lighting. The light was bright where it fell on the lush grass, though the day wasn't particularly bright, yet the shadows were somehow diffuse, ill defined.

There was an eerie stillness in the air, and it felt neither warm nor cold. No sound could be heard except his own breath - no birds, no breeze. A mist lay in patches, low to the ground, thick enough to swirl and eddy around his feet as he moved, with slow, cautious steps, back toward the mansion. Something was making him edgy, and while he could not identify the source of his nervousness, he was prepared to meet any challenge.

He searched around the mansion once more, although he knew that the others were unlikely to have returned. He finally gave up and returned to the main lounge. He sat down in a chair, and stared pensively at the table. He looked at it for some time before it dawned on him that all of the breakfast things he had earlier seen were now gone, and the only things on the table were the cutlery that was laid out for lunch, the salt and pepper mills, and the large bottle of tomato ketchup that Ragnar insisted was present at every meal. He looked around wildly, but saw no other sign of activity.

He thought about it again, sweat breaking out on his noble brow. There was obviously something fishy going on. Someone had cleared away the breakfast things, but who? He decided to go back to his rooms and cogitate on the matter there. he had a bottle of whisky that might help things along a little.

He walked into his room, and figured that he would clear away his breakfast things before getting down to the serious thinking ahead. He stared, jaw dropping, when he saw that his little table was clean!

He had seen no sign of the staff that worked at the mansion, which wasn't all that unusual - they did their very best to not interrupt the Scoobs - but he hadn't even seen Molly, the housekeeper, or Sopkin, the butler. Those two were generally to be seen somewhere around. So who had tidied his table? Who had tidied the main lounge? He sat on his bed, opened his bottle of whisky, and drained a good couple of shots.

He sat, drinking and thinking, thinking and drinking, ideas going around and around in his head. After several hours, no nearer to a conclusion, he staggered upright, and weaved his way down the corridor to Ragnar's room. Barging through the door, he could see that the room was in it's usual state - slightly messy, with the Viking's impressive collection of empty alcohol bottles lining three of the walls. But no sign of his friend. He staggered out, and headed to Kara's room. He knocked on the door, which eventually swung open, to reveal another empty room. He screamed in frustration, and turned around, screaming again as his inebriated stumble caused him to scrape his arm along the wall. Back at Ragnar's room, he stared at the sight before him - the same room, but now with Ragnar's heavy fur cloak in a pile on the floor. He tottered backwards, and slid down the wall behind him, blubbering with confusion and drunken-ness.

*********************************************************

Ragnar pushed back his chair, and stood up, allowing Molly and Sopkin to clear away his breakfast plate. The others all began to rise, Kara waving a quick goodbye as she headed to her room for a quick nap.

The others all agreed, and headed out into the gardens to walk off their breakfasts. The air outside was still and pleasant, with a little bit of a chill, and after about half an hour or so, they all began to feel a lot more active. They decided to go to the lake and try the canoes that Chryse had just got from Canoos4yoo.com, and spent a couple of hours paddling around, and ganging up on Ragnar, splashing him.

Back at the mansion, Ragnar went back to his room to remove his cloak, which was soaked through. He found his door wide open, which was odd, because he was sure he'd closed it when he left for breakfast.Shrugging, he dumped his cloak and went back downstairs to join the others.

*****************************************************

Kara woke up suddenly when someone started hammering on her door. Scowling, she got up, and stalked over to the door, yanking it open.

"What?" she was about to shout, but stopped when she saw there was no-one there. She peered along the corridor outside, but could see nobody. Shrugging, she turned to go back to bed, but then decided to go down and see the others.

As she walked along the corridor, nearing Ragnar's room, his door flung open. She jumped, clutching at her chest with shock. Obviously, someone was playing silly games, but she couldn't see the only people who had the kind of powers necessary for that bothering with such childish pranks. She shrugged again, and continued her way down to the main lounge.

Arriving there, she saw the others sitting around, chatting.

"Hi, gang," she said,

"Hello," the others chorused. Kara looked around again, frowning.

"Emram still not about?" she asked.

"Haven't seen him," Chryse replied. "Rag? You two are normally never far from each other - or a drink, for that matter. Any ideas?"

The Viking shook his head. "We hadn't made any specific plans," he said. "But it is unusual for him to be absent. He's not in his room, I checked there. Although, his whisky bottle wasn't there either." He stopped, frowning.

"Well, maybe he went off for a quiet drink," Kayde suggested. Ragnar shook his head again.